EPA proposes granting WV authority over wells critical to carbon capture projects

If finalized, the EPA’s proposal would authorize West Virginia to regulate the injection of carbon dioxide into deep rock formations in accordance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Carbon dioxide is injected through specially made wells that deposit and store material deep beneath the earth in rock formations that must be assessed to ensure they’re safe for long-term carbon dioxide containment.

The EPA has approved primary regulatory authority, or primacy, for wells used to inject carbon dioxide into deep rock formations in just three states: Louisiana, North Dakota and Wyoming. Such wells are known as Class VI wells, one of six classes of injection wells regulated under the EPA’s Underground Injection Control program that regulates the injection of fluids like water, wastewater, brines from gas and oil production, and carbon dioxide into the subsurface for storage or disposal.

Community and environmental advocates have spoken out against the potential for the EPA to grant West Virginia Class VI primacy, arguing the state Department of Environmental Protection lacks the funding or staffing to take on the responsibility of primacy.

But the EPA has opened a 45-day comment period on the proposal after determining, subject to public comment, that the state’s application meets all applicable requirements for approval.

ARCH2: Class VI primacy would ease permitting

West Virginia leaders have invested heavily in projects expected to rely on Class VI wells.

In October 2023, the Department of Energy selected a planned Appalachian regional hub for hydrogen production, storage and delivery to receive up to $925 million. The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, known as ARCH2, got $30 million of that potential $925 million in funding in August.

ARCH2 is slated to develop a network of hydrogen-based energy and product manufacturing expected to span parts of West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The hub will draw from the region’s natural gas to produce the hydrogen and is expected to use carbon capture technology, which is unproven at commercial scale. Those project aspects have drawn criticism the enterprise could be a boondoggle that locks the region into potentially expanded fossil fuel infrastructure, drives up energy prices and fails to yield job growth.

The program’s supporters predict the proposed hydrogen network will help lower emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industrial sectors spur significant private-sector investment and support thousands of jobs in West Virginia.

But the potential for a regional carbon dioxide pipeline buildout has raised concerns due to risks of induced seismicity and carbon dioxide leakage during storage.

ARCH2 has said the DEP attaining Class VI primacy would ease the permitting process and could create new prospects for carbon sequestration.

Report found lax DEP well oversight

Seventeen groups, including the League of Women Voters of West Virginia, Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, the West Virginia Environmental Council and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, signed a letter to regional EPA officials in August 2023 expressing “deep concerns� with state regulators seeking primary authority over the federal Class VI injection well program.

The groups cited a 2019 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a global environmental nonprofit, finding the DEP had failed to effectively administer an underground injection control program. The report found a quarter of 19 oil and gas non-Class VI wells reviewed submitted reports indicating continued injection under an expired permit and that integrity tests often weren’t conducted as frequently as required.

In 2022, the West Virginia Legislature passed a law, House Bill 4491, that set up state regulations for underground carbon dioxide storage.

HB 4491 was a gas and oil industry-backed product of lawmakers’ embrace of carbon capture, use and storage technology. State and federal legislators have viewed the technology, which captures carbon emissions from coal-fired plants and stores it underground, as a way to keep coal in the energy mix amid the country’s shift toward reducing emissions and the rise of renewable resource use.

In 2024, the Legislature approved HB 5045, which increased the minimum amount of time a storage operator could be issued a certificate for fulfilling post-injection site care and site closure requirements after carbon dioxide injections from 10 to 50 years. But HB 5045 also would allow other time frames to be established on a site-specific basis.

Carbon capture has been uneconomic option

The cost of implementing carbon capture and storage technology “exceeds its value in most potential settings,� according to a nonpartisan December 2023 analysis of the technology by the Congressional Budget Office.

The analysis noted the cost of implementing carbon capture and storage is likely to influence companies’ future decisions about using the technology and that costs may be reduced as more carbon capture projects come online and show how best to implement the technology.

But the analysis also noted some studies have been pessimistic about the prospects for carbon capture and storage and expect modifications to a tax credit for such projects will have little impact.

Carbon use programs received $102 million in annual appropriations from 2021 to 2023 and another $310 million in funding for 2022 through 2026 from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office analysis.

The analysis noted that federal dollars spent on carbon capture and storage could instead have been used to subsidize further development of clean energy sources and supporting technologies, like energy storage that could mitigate concerns about intermittency linked to renewable electric power.

If such alternative clean energy technologies prove to be superior to carbon capture and storage as ways of slashing carbon dioxide emissions, and if carbon capture spending limited progress on those technologies, that spending could be a misallocation of federal research and development funding, the analysis warns.

There’s already been a long history of federal spending on carbon capture and storage — with little emissions reduction progress to show for it.

In a December 2021 report, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, noted that Department of Energy investments in 11 carbon capture and storage demonstration projects totaling $1.1 billion since 2009 had resulted in only three operational facilities.

As of September 2023, 15 carbon capture and storage facilities were operating in the U.S., per the 2023 Congressional Budget Office analysis. Most of the facilities were at plants that process natural gas or produce ethanol for fuel or ammonia for fertilizer. Those 15 facilities had the capacity to capture about just 0.4% of total national annual carbon dioxide emissions.

The Chemours Company cited concerns regarding the proposed implementation of a different tax credit for hydrogen production as driving a decision it made along with TC Energy to exit ARCH2 earlier this year.

CNX Resources, a Pittsburgh-based gas developer and producer, announced in December 2023 it had ended coordination under ARCH2 with a planned ammonia production site in Mingo County. Like Chemours, CNX cited concern over a hydrogen production tax credit as driving its decision to end coordination with the project.